Aidan Baker — Adverse Camber

Aidan Baker's Adverse Camber is a cinematic soundscape with tension and brooding melancholy, where instruments are present but heavily processed. Underwater piano and guitar with a heavy, enveloping fuzz, and resonant, at times violently distorted E-bow drones in the climactic moments. It feels influenced by the style of psychedelic minimalist riffers like Seefeel or Earth (in their earlier distorted period), taken to its fully ambient next logical step.

With a vast, oceanic soundspace, it is a sensation of being inside the chord. It has a soulful, immediately emotional musical language, the guitar retaining its direct communicative properties even when it is shrouded in verb. Adverse Camber is tragic and romantic like the best shoegaze albums, with titles such as "Everything is Dark Until You Say Yes". The emotional pain in the music distinguishes it strongly from the new age themes in traditional ambient styles. Though it has been processed into a cloud-like soundcurrent, it has the ethos of post rock at its heart. One has heard similar tones in the long intros of songs by bands like Sigur Ros or Godpeed You Black Emperor. The rough tone of the delays and verbs makes me think they're made with guitar pedals rather than created on a computer, meaning this soundscape is very much a live performance. I can hear him manually switch off the distortion at the end of the 1st piece.

Subtle chordal shifts provide emotional peaks and valleys in the partially obscured landscape. It feels well thought out and filled with content, with a variety of tones and sounds despite staying within an ambient realm, impressive for an artist who has created dozens of recordings. Baker has a natural sense of how to create a fluid progression of emotional narratives. Recommended for any fan of ambient post rock or artists such as Kyle Bobby Dunn who share a similar tragic affect.